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Friday, 29 April 2016

Any regular to this site will know that I save a special spot for any 'super hero' stories that cross my path. So it will come as no shock that I have reserved one post for Tom Roche .... a regular Spider-man.

He is a party entertainer who was driving to a gig in October 2015, when his spider senses started tingling ... What could it be? Was the 'Green Goblin' in the vicinity .... no. Doctor Octopus escaped .... no he's still in the insane asylum. So what was it he thought .... his spidey vision and spidey nose instantly supplied the answer, and he honed his senses on to the smoke pouring from a speeding car in the vicinity.

China is another nation on the rise again ..... like the Germans (and to an extent the Russians), they like to make it clear to their neighbours, who the big boy on the block is. So they lay claim to islands thousands of miles off the Chinese mainland and all the waters in between. These claims are contrary to all the current laws of the sea and maritime claims processes, but are enforced by land grabs, and military sabre rattling.

As discussed in other posts, the Germans are now at the forefront of Europe under Mother Merkel's tender leadership. So apparently the Fourth Reich, is now not just content with making the EU dance to the Germans drumming, on policies such as immigration and economic policy, its now throwing its weight about in relation to what power sources its neighbours can use.

One of the teachers unions has had the barefaced cheek to claim that spelling tests for children discriminate against what they describe as 'creative children'. They also claim that those children who are 'dyslexic', which a presumably those that are not being described as being 'creative' are also discriminated against by the same spelling tests.

Friday, 22 April 2016

Now quite a while ago I mentioned the story of the Algerian diplomat who demanded a divorce and the return of his marriage gifts to her family, after seeing his unveiled bride for the first time on their wedding night.

Well it seems that they are very demanding men in Algeria, even when basically being given a wife (usually a cousin), because out of that same country comes the tale another Algerian husband suing his bride of just one day.

All went well it seems on the wedding day, and even the wedding night, which we presume was in the dark, but come the morning .....

Bigamy was once a very common crime at one time, especially before the law changes in the 1970's which allowed easier and easier divorces. Nowadays its mostly restricted to those Muslims who refuse to recognise our laws, and take 'Islamic wives', usually while on welfare benefits, so that we have to house and fund their lifestyle choices, instead of deporting them. The latest figures suggest that there are as many as 20,000 polygamous Muslim marriages in the UK. Virtually no one is ever arrested.

Its not often that a atheist leaning Arab has ever survived to die of old age, particularly a well respected and well read poet, but such is the case with Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri, a man who lived in what is now Syria around 1,000 AD.

Blind and rather penniless (he once joked that he became a vegetarian not through moral choice but because "my income is a little over 20 dinars a year and when my servant takes out of that as much as he wants, no magnificent sum is left so I restrict myself to beans and lentils, and such food as I would rather not mention"), he was also a deliberate celibate in a society, that even now expects men to have a wife and children.

A US President comes to the UK, during a very sensitive political debate about our future membership of a deeply undemocratic organisation, aka the European Union. A matter solely for the British people to decide. Now good manners would suggest that he keep his comments on the subject to a polite 'Its not for us to interfere in the internal politics of a friend and ally" ....

UK: US Puppet Or Valued Friend And Ally?

But no, he wades in like we are some errant US political satellite such as Panama, and opens up with both barrels.

Friday, 15 April 2016

As the world melts ... the permafrost weakens every year, and as well as vast amounts of methane gas being released (thus speeding up global warming), there is another just as deadly threat released.

Its the viruses, locked away for millennia and more, that were sealed in the frozen ground when the world was a very different place, and effectively an alien planet. Some of these viruses that have been locked away are for illnesses and creatures that we no longer have any particular defence against.

Whenever we face something new, its natural to look it carefully over, test it, and then use it if it proves useful to us. However, when we are faced with changes at work, changes often imposed by someone 'who knows better than you', about how you should work, if you don't embrace it wholeheartedly, you are accused of being 'resistant to change' ... as though its a bad thing.

All bow to the Mighty Ottoman Sultan and Turkish President 'Recep Tayyip Erdogan the Magnificent' .... as apparently insulting him, is even a criminal offence in the New Germany of 'Mother Merkel'.

In a case that has echoes of the Charlie Hebdo incident in France, a German satirist, who may be tasteless, but is part of a vibrant satire industry in Germany, is to be considered for criminal charges. This after deliberately flouting a German law on free speech, section 103 of the criminal code, which bans insulting representatives or organs belonging to foreign states.

In the annals of stupidity we may well be living through a bumper time .... When else in history, is a civilisation committing such reckless behaviour with its future, as the Western European one is doing right now?

Perhaps it could be argued that the Roman Empires decision to entrust its defence to Germans, was, with hindsight a rather reckless action, and one which in the West at least, ended in disaster. But as its not conclusive that the Western Empire wouldn't in fact have fallen to the Huns or some other group even earlier, if not for the confederate German tribes, we can't be sure.

Friday, 8 April 2016

One of the great pleasures of the Internet (apart from porn) ... lets not be bashful about the fact that its been argued that its porn that built the Internet into what it is now, but that's another post .... is the wide scope it gives, for crackpots and conspiracists to air their views .... no matter how strange.

These people are in fact the proud heirs to a tradition of nut-cases that stretches back at least a few centuries in the West (I can't comment on other cultures, where tolerance levels seem to be lower), and perhaps even further, if we ignore the Christian era. But even in that era for example, 'Popist plots', have littered English history ever since we became a Protestant Nation ... some were real (the Gunpowder plot for example). But most were not.

There are countless other examples from around the world, including wars, started after 'conspirators' created 'incidents' e.g. Poland's supposed 'attack' on Germany to start World War II (which by the way is called a 'False Flag' conspiracy, in the knowing circles .... search for that term and watch the pages return).

Oddly, on the very same day as the newspapers reported on the Bishop of Manchester, and his 'smallish'six bedroom house, not being big enough to house migrants, there was another story next to it.

This one involved the ex-Manchester United and England player Gary Neville (who has recently been sacked as manager of Spanish side Valencia). He and business partner ex-footballer Ryan Giggs, had acquired a rather handsome grade II listed Victorian building, right in the centre of Manchester for £1.5 million, which was formerly the old Stock Exchange Building. They plan to renovate it, and turn it into a high end hotel and spa.

When anyone is requesting that the country leteven more 'Asylum seekers' come in to to this country, and have even suggested that people could offer them homes, its always best to ensure that its not actually your own homes that are shared .... or so it seems for David Walker the Bishop of Manchester.

One of the UK's biggest social problems is housing its burgeoning population. The full scale of immigration (both from within and outside of the European Union), has been at least partly buried by successive governments.

This was for different reasons, with Labour trying to hide the massive impacts on white British communities, and the Tories trying to hide the fact that they had not regained control of our borders as promised .... these deceptions will all be uncovered before the EU referendum, when the current government publishes details of why the Office of National Statistics consistently shows a level of immigration, which is only one third of the annual issue of National Insurance Numbers (a number without which you can't legally work in the UK).

However even without the undoubted large scale fraud surrounding these numbers (as we have no national ID scheme), its fairly obvious that there is a problem with the large size of the discrepancy. But more of that in a future post ...... But whatever the reason, the fact is that house prices and availability of housing has not kept pace with the numbers of those seeking to buy their own home.

There are of course a number of factors involved with this:

The recession since 2008, which has kept income inflation far lower than house price inflation.

The reluctance of many to buy houses in certain areas (a colleague of mine in his late 20's wants his first home in an expensive area of a major city, so is still saving 'a deposit' even though he gets a lot more than the local average salary).

The affordability of new or existing houses for new buyers.

Recent figures produced by Lloyds Bank Research suggest that this last issue affordability, rather than actual supply, is the biggest driver of the inability to get on the housing ladder, and the reversal of the trend for home ownership. These figures suggest that the average city property, is 6.6 times higher than the average local salary and this gap is rising (it was 6.2 last year) ... a rise of 8% in property prices .... and therein lies the problem.

The First Step On The Housing Ladder Was Easier A Few Decades Ago .....

Friday, 1 April 2016

Beware that booze when your on holiday with your partner ... there's nearly always one row and these can lead to strange events.

I had at least three public bust ups with my lady friends (actually now I come to think on it, it was actually all the same woman .... hmm that may explain the 'ex' nature of that relationship), immediately prior to, or while on holiday. On all occasions, we patched it up and proceeded on our way without too much damage at the time ... although cumulatively it may have had an effect.

Croatia is one the edge of Europe's 'wild west', the Balkans. Therefore its always a case of 'buyer beware' when you enter that region as the laws may not always be what you expect .... they also often kind of favour the locals!

So I wasn't surprised but was amused when I read the tale of two Norwegian tourists (whom I am guessing were males), who came a cropper in the murkier backwaters of that land.

Sometimes a story requires no comment, and others require utter condemnation. Occasionally one just shocks beyond comprehension.

In the United Arab Emirates, Arab women are allowed to swim in the sea, as long as they are suitably covered up in an Islamic swimsuit. As you might guess this is often a very conservative and cumbersome covering, which can make swimming difficult, but not impossible (just so that Westerners can't criticise the Muslim treatment of women).

Still A Hundred Years Behind In Clothes ... Or Maybe Fourteen Hundred Years In Attitudes

There has been much play in the UK press, over a story that Germany has introduced women only rail carriages, ostensibly as a direct response to the influx of men from the Islamic world, and the sex attacks in Cologne. This however has been denied by the Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn, train operator, who said that the measures were intended to 'encourage a safer atmosphere for all female travellers in general'.